You fight just so long and then you begin to worry about being washed up. You fear there's one way to go and
that's down.
-- on Lupe's suicide, four years before her own suicide.
I have no intention of ending my career in a rooming house, with full scrapbooks and an empty stomach.
Every girl in the world wants to find the right man, someone who is sympathetic and understanding and helpful and
strong, someone she can love madly.
Although I avoided dramatics - and everything else - in school. I wanted to be a success on the stage, the screen,
or the radio. So I saved my money and when I had bus fare and $16.82 over, I told my mother, Clara, I was going to
leave home. She was heartbroken, but she believed in me.
We had a wonderful time everywhere overseas. But it was hard. For five months we never gave less than five shows a
day. It was too cold to sleep nights and there wasn't water enough to take a bath. I had to do my own washing. And
I ate more sand and fog, than food.
I want to be as good an actress as Bette Davis, and I'd like to be a great singer. But more than
that I'd like to be happily married and have some children.
A bathing suit is a girl's best friend in Hollywood. No girl should consider herself too important for that kind of
publicity.
Why do people attack me for getting three divorces? It's legal; if there's something wrong about it, why don't they
attack the laws of the land, and let me alone?
My dreams are mad, silly things. I've started reading Freud. Very interesting.
I want a fair chance to prove myself something more than a curvaceous cutie. I want to get out of bathing suits
and into something more substantial. Unfortunately the publicity department of my studio does not agree. They have
conceived the brilliant idea of selling me to the public as the ping girl - because she makes you purr. This flash
of genius is to be illustrated with a series of pictures out of their files, suggestive of anything but acting
talent.
The first time I wore a bare midriff gown, Hollywood noticed me. Hollywood didn't discover me, I discovered it.
Let me tell you this: Every girl in the world wants to find the right man, someone who is sympathetic and
understanding and helpful and strong, someone she can love madly. Actresses are no exception; the glamour and the
tinsel, the fame and the money mean very little if there is hurt in the heart.
If you want to interest men, you have to have the courage to attract them. Most men, I've found, like a girl who's
daring enough to get their attention - if she's demure enough to appreciate it after she gets it. As long as it's a
man's world, a girl has to be daring to get ahead.
I demand a sense of humor in any man in my life. Cesar Romero, for example, has a wonderful sense
of humor, plus a wonderful quality of humility. He makes fun of his face. Calls himself Cowface. He doesn't think
he is the great Adonis, as so many actors do.
I'm pretty good at saving up to a certain point. When the money bags start getting heavy I have an awful urge to
lighten them. But the business manager is curing me of that.
The only thing I've found out about love is that I don't know anything about it. I wish somebody would tell me what
it's really like. I've made a couple of guesses. But that business about 'women's intuition' just isn't true. Not
in my case, anyway.
I think Busby is a very grand person and I have the highest regard for him. I do hope someday he'll meet the right
person to bring him happiness as a life companion. I wasn't the right person.
Three orders at a time had me nuts. I'd bring in the beef stew and give it to the wrong man and he'd start in on
it. By that time I'd realize the error and give grab it away. The man who was supposed to get the beef stew then
wouldn't take it. Before I was through the manager would be making me pay for half the orders.
If I look like Miss Lombard - and I don't - please spare her the humiliation.
This is a wonderful country. The people are wonderful, too. They like me for myself. -- referring to England
The manager of the Royal Hawaiian club in San Francisco was interviewing girls to sing and dance in the floor show
and when he asked me if I could sing and dance I blithely said 'Of course, I'm great!' when actually I was a
greenhorn at both. Luckily the chorus was learning a new hula routine and in the resultant confusion no one noticed
I didn't know my right foot from my left.
Every girl has, in the back of her wish department, some unsatisfied longing held over from childhood. Personally,
I always wanted to play the piano. Now that I have a piano and some spare time between pictures, I've been taking
lessons. I'm not good, but I'm getting better and I've obtained a lot of satisfaction out of the effort.
I only hope it's true that the third time is the charm. Because I'm pretty sure I'll marry again. I like the things
marriage stands for. I'm just praying I can wait long enough next time to be sure it's love. I don't want to be
guessing all my life.
I think sex is definitely here to stay so I don't see any necessity for throwing it in people's faces. I don't
think a girl has to wear dresses cut down to her tummy to exhibit what is known as feminine allure. She can exhibit
it in a high neck dress but subtly. Heaven knows I want people to think I have sex appeal. But I also want to think
I have something besides sex appeal.
It’s not only a duty, it's a lark. Even if your clothes are wrinkled, your face is chapped to the ears and you're
deaf from flying in bombers, it's like home when you come down in the midst of Americans. It's living such as I
have never known back here. -- on entertaining the troops.
It's just dandy - and it's already lasted two whole weeks.
-- on her romance with Franchot Tone.
Anyone in public life gets used to unkind rumors after a time. Though all of them are very upsetting when they
are published and spoken about publicly, particularly by those in the business who are, shall I say, jealous of
your success. I have learned to stand up to them by ignoring them and not dignifying them with an answer.
I didn’t think anyone knew I’d ever been married. I thought Irving had forgotten our marriage, too. We lived
together for three weeks and then had an argument. I’ve only seen him once since then, and that was when he told me
he wanted a divorce. - on her first husband Irving Wheeler.
Long ago I learned that Little Goody Two Shoes fared right well in the copy books, but in real life she wound up on
the short end of the deal. Me, I'm a realist. Be a little naughty and you get what you want in life.
Something hit me right in the heart. I only looked at him for a minute, but I saw his wonderful dimples, his
tremendously expressive eyes, his curly hair. I took a deep breath and said 'Hello'. My heart was beating a mile a
minute. I reached for my tea cup to steady myself but my hand only shook. We talked for a bit and he asked me to
have a cocktail with him after the show. I quickly accepted. What has he done to me? I'd never felt like this.
-- on meeting her third husband Tommy Wallace.
Don't gossip - particularly about other women. Don't make sarcastic and catty remarks. Kindness is the secret to
true femininity.
I want to be as good an actress as Bette Davis, and I'd like to be a great singer. But more than that I'd like to
be happily married and have some children.
It is a great disappointment to me that I'm not expecting along with several other of my married friends. Both my
husband and I feel that it is time to forget about the superficial things in life. It is the natural, wholesome way
of living - having children and establishing a home - that counts.
Having a child makes a soldier realize that he has something very real to fight for. With a home and a family
waiting for him, he has an incentive to give everything he has. When the war is over, we intend to buy a large
ranch in Nevada. Lots of space, several children, simple living is our dream.
Although my career is secondary, it will be necessary for me, and a lot of other wives, to help financially until
my husband gets back into civilian life.
We're really eager for that family of three children. I think Horace prefers boys but I'll be satisfied with either
boys or girls, although I think an arrangement of two boys and a girl would be nice. I find I'm terribly anxious to
start living in a real home of my own and once my children arrive, they and my husband will be the most important
things in my life. My motion picture career will be of secondary importance.
I always seemed so much older than the other kids my age - they seemed like tots.
Movies are a tremendous power for the good. In wartime they helped stave off countless cases of homesickness, they
entertained our men and kept them informed about people and things back home. Ask any veteran how important those
nightly movies in the jungle rain were to him and his buddies. I know because I sat though many myself.
I have now what I've always wanted in a marriage. I have the feeling of a deep security which will insure a
permanent future with children of our own. I have a home now, not merely a house. My husband (her fourth
husband Horace Schmidlapp) has a solid sense of values and brings out the best in me. We're already planning a
home in the East with at least three children. When this happens, I'll commute to Hollywood for my picture
assignments.
We're going to call New York home. My husband's business keeps him in New York most of the time so we decided we
could hardly make Hollywood as a permanent home.
Ever since I was a very small child, I wanted marriage and children more than I wanted anything else, including a
career. Because I wanted marriage and children so badly, I constantly sought for love, I was too eager for it. I
read into people things that weren't there, so that the minute a personable fellow, with whom I felt the least
'sympatica' showed me the least persuasive interest, I just went overboard for it.
I hate to lose any friends because I feel that a little part of me goes with them. The sense of loss is painful.
Now I know upon whom I can rely.
